Lawsuit accuses S.D. officials of harassment, retaliation

San Diego  A former employee of the City Auditor’s Office is accusing city officials of harassment over his sexual orientation, retaliating against him for filing complaints and wrongful termination in a lawsuit that stems from internal complaints that were first reported by U-T San Diego in October.

Edward Moreno, who worked in the office for nearly three years before his Aug. 31 resignation, filed the lawsuit earlier this month seeking unspecified damages from the city. It reveals that Moreno was the source of a complaint that City Auditor Eduardo Luna and his second-in-command, Chris Constantin, tried to cover up a workplace injury by asking their employees to lie to state inspectors about the incident.

A second auditor employee filed a separate complaint that an audit of the city’s building permit process was conducted in a way to make Development Services Director Kelly Broughton look bad. Then there were subsequent complaints, including from Moreno, that Luna and Constantin were retaliating against employees they suspected of filing the complaints.

The city spent nearly $70,000 on two separate investigations, but the final resolution was never made public because it involved personnel issues.

Moreno’s lawsuit doesn’t name either Luna or Constantin as defendants, but their actions are central to the case. They are represented by former City Attorney Michael Aguirre who said it’s easy to make allegations but much harder to prove them. He said his clients were exonerated by the city probes and continue to deny the allegations.

“This is the start of a process,” Aguirre said. “There will be depositions taken and there’ll be an opportunity to challenge the facts in court. We expect that when that process is over that the city will prevail and the individuals (Luna and Constantin) will prevail.”

The lawsuit also adds a new allegation against the city. Moreno, who is gay, said he filed a complaint with the city’s human resources director in May alleging he was being harassed by a female co-worker about his sexual orientation. He said the woman repeatedly asked co-workers if he was gay and inquired about his past relationships. She also allegedly told him to “hookup” with an auditor from a different city who she thought was gay. In another incident, Moreno said she told him to consider competing in the Miss Universe pageant after she heard there was a transgender contestant.

In the lawsuit, Moreno accused Luna and Constantin of scrutinizing his activities closely after he filed the complaints. He said he was accused of time card fraud and they started questioning his performance. At one point, Moreno said Constantin called him a “rotten apple” because he was letting the alleged sexual harassment affect his performance and told him to ”toughen up.”

Moreno said he resigned because he couldn’t take it any more. “These working conditions were so intolerable that a reasonable person in plaintiff’s position would have had no reasonable alternative except to resign,” the lawsuit said.

The City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The workplace incident that began the city probes occurred in April when an auditor employee broke an arm in a fall while using a recreational balancing board in the office. That prompted an investigation by the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. A month later, employees complained to human resources that they were told by Luna and Constantin to mislead or withhold information from investigators so the office wouldn’t look bad.